On to Kanazawa
If you haven’t already read about Days 1 & 2 in Tokyo, you can find them here.
Tokyo is connected to Kanazawa via the Hokuriku Shinkansen (shinkansen is the term for bullet trains). This means that the 454.1km (282mi) journey took us 2h30.
Most of the country is connected via shinkansen, with local trains connecting many of the smaller cities between.
The first to open was the Tōkaidō Shinkansen line connecting Tokyo to Osaka, on October 1, 1964, just before the Tokyo Olympics. Even at that time it was doing speeds of 210km/h (130mph). Additional lines have continued to be added, with ours to Kanazawa being just over 10 years old. It felt amazing to travel so quickly between cities, and it’s a little depressing being back in North America, knowing we had 60 years to start to catch up and chose not to.
The trip to Kanazawa cost ¥14,800 (93 USD / 130 CAD) and the journey took us through some mountains and smaller towns, which were cool to see.
Kanazawa was one of two cities (the other being Takayama) that I was super excited to visit. Based on my reading, they are smaller towns with some character. Kanazawa is known for its samurai and geisha districts, as well as for having the third most beautiful garden in Japan.
Before heading off to see the city, we checked into our hotel — The Hotel Sanraku Kanazawa, which was a 20 minute walk from the station. This was a fun experience because, despite paying less than $150 / night, we found ourselves at a bougie hotel — one staff member met us at the entrance with a list of guests they were expecting, he walked us to the lobby and used his earpiece to alert the front desk of who they’re to check-in less than a minute later. Those staff checked us in quickly and then used their earpiece to summon someone else who walked us all of the way to our room. I found it really hard to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing at the excessive formality!
After settling in, we started our exploring with the geiko district (‘geiko’ is the word for ‘geisha’ in Kanazawa and Kyoto). Geikos are female entertainers, but not sex workers as the West has sometimes mistakenly portrayed them to be. Geikos and maikos (geikos in training) study to sing, dance, host party games, and are very skilled conversationally. While there were thousands of geikos in Kanazawa historically, the number has dwindled greatly in recent years.
We were exploring in the evening, so the shops were closed and the streets practically empty.
We didn’t see any geikos travelling to their evening commitments, but we booked a geiko show for the following evening.
Next, we grabbed dinner at a yakitori joint, ordering from an English menu. However, we failed to notice (for it wasn’t written anywhere) that everything we ordered was chicken and that let us down quite a bit as we were primed for some red meat. The veggies were amazing, as they always were through our entire time in Japan. Food came out one plate at a time, so I never got a shot of everything.
Being quite jet lagged, we called it a night. I was up at 4am and had a good soak in the tub. A number of hotels that we stayed in provided bath salts for soaking, and we made good use of them. With the amount of walking we did in Japan, soaks were really helpful for the sore muscles — I’ll be doing more of that as I travel!
Once Paul, who was very good at sleeping, was up, we headed to the local fish market. Unfortunately, he might have been good at sleeping in part because he was getting sick with a cold.
We got some shumai, a hot yuzu drink (yuzu is from the citrus family), as well as a container of strawberries. This became a tradition — picking up strawberries for breakfast — because they were in-season and so incredibly delicious.
We also dropped by a konbini (convenience store) to pick up a pork bun — I was delightfully surprised about the quality of the food across konbinis. Everything is fresh, delicious, and they stock lots of healthy foods too. We would frequently pickup snacks as we passed 7–11s, Lawsons, and FamilyMarts (that’s my order of preference, by the way). Every night, I’d also pick up breakfast for the next day — bagged fruit like sliced apples and pineapples, as well as a nut mix, yogurt, and a pastry. We never once had breakfast provided by the hotel — it always seemed so expensive in comparison to $6 breakfast from a konbini. Plus, Paul brought granola bars and snacks from home for his breakfasts.
We had less than two days in Kanazawa, so our time there felt rushed. After the fish market we went to the samurai district, pictured below.
We explored for a half hour before heading to our scheduled tour at the Myoryuji Temple, colloquially known as the Ninja Temple. Buildings at the time were limited to two stories, and from the outside this building looks to follow these rules. However, inside you’ll find hidden rooms and passageways split across four stories and seven levels (half-stories).
This building was disguised as a temple, but had a lookout on the highest floor and the ability to defend itself through many creative features, such as false closets and bamboo walls that let light through to allow samurais on one side of it to see everything going on in the adjacent room. It was a really enjoyable tour, even though it was entirely in Japanese and we were reading facts from a binder.
Unfortunately, we have no photos from within the temple, as photography was not allowed.
Outside of the temple was a wall of wooden dog faces. I inquired and learned that you can buy one, write a message addressed to your dog, and then hang it up for good health and good luck. So we put one up for Heidi!
After the tour, we were headed to the gardens and found a curry restaurant along the way. Like many of the restaurants we would visit on this trip, it was a hole in the wall. I had never had Japanese curry and this was one of my favourite meals of the entire trip! Thank you Kanazawa Nanahoshi Curry.
The gardens were in fact beautiful, even though it wasn’t blooming season for most plants. We spent an 1h— 1h30 there, all in all.
They were incredily clean and orderly, accomplished by a number of staff meticulously picking away at every square metre.
The gardens cost a few bucks to enter and despite that the photos above show, had quite a few people around (it’s off season, so I imagine they’re very busy during peak season). However, they are open for free in the wee morning hours (05:00–06:45 while we were there, but the hours change seasonally). I ended up coming back the next day for a quick stroll while video calling my parents.
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On our way out we visited some of the shops to buy postcards, more dango, and a few souvenirs. Like I’ve mentioned before, you can’t walk and eat, so they provide these benches with mats to sit and enjoy your desserts (or dogs) on.
It was almost time for our geiko performance, so we headed back to the Chaya district. It was a lot more lively than the night before, with shops open for business.
Before leaving on this trip, we did some ‘research’ into where to visit by watching Chris Broad’s youtube channel, “Abroad in Japan”. One of the goofy things he mentioned about Kanazawa was gold-plated ice cream. Total gimmick, but I went for it so I could show the kids in my life that I ate gold ice cream!
Before the geiko show, we were invited to explore their tiny museum for a few minutes. This museum, unlike many others we visited, actually had some writing in English. I think I learned more from the museum than the show itself.
The show had two geikos performing — one of who is three years into her career, while the other several decades. They spent 10 minutes on each of song, dance, party game, and Q&A. It was cool to see them in action, but for the price ($70 USD) and the time (40–50 minutes) I didn’t think it was worth the experience. Much of what I’d learned about geikos, I did from reading Wikipedia while soaking in the tub ahead of the show.
After the performance, it was time to eat again — the best time, when you’re in Japan! Ebisu Sushi came recommended by several Redditors so we decided to try it out. This is the kind of restaurant where you’re given two decisions to make — sashimi (Paul) or sushi (Julia), and whether you’d like wasabi on every piece (no).
Then, before you know it, there is a wide variety of food in front of you, some of which you can’t identify. I lost track of how many courses the meal ended up being.
While the food was undoubtedly of amazing quality, it was perhaps a little too adventurous for us. Especially because, as we ate what was on our plates, more things appeared in front of us. Paul was incredibly brave and I was so proud of him — just a few years ago he was hesitant to eat Americanized sushi, and here he was helping me with the weirdest sushi on my plate.
Here’s the look of delight, and entirely not betrayal, on his face.
I think the chef saw Paul helping me with my food and gave him a special delivery of squid too, poor guy! He cleaned the plates off as a polite Japanese visitor would.
If you’re a sushi fan, I’d highly recommend this restaurant! I remember thinking, “it was on the pricier side,” but that’s solely because I’d already adapted to the really affordable food prices in Japan. These meals cost us ¥4,000 each, which is 24 USD or 35 CAD.
The only downside of the restaurant, is that it gave me a throwback to 1990s-2000s Russia, with the hole in the ground toilet. We wound encounter many more of these throughout our travels. They are a stark difference from the comfortable, pre-heated seats with bidets and music that we saw in most places.
That was it for the night!
The next morning at dawn we explored the castle grounds, and like I’d read in the reviews, there wasn’t very much to the castle. It’s free to enter at any hour, and I would say you’d spend 30 minutes tops there.
I continued to the gardens, while Paul read every plaque on the castle grounds. I was able to get this coveted shot in the gardens, which wasn’t accessible the day before unless you stood in a line for ~10 minutes.
If you’re wondering why the tree branches are supported by ropes, it’s so that they don’t break under the heavy weight of snow during winter.
If we had arrived just a week later, I bet this path would have been magical to walk through!
That was it for our time in Kanazawa! We really enjoyed it and wished we had more time to spend there, but we had an 08:10 bus to catch from the station that would take us to Shirakawa-go, and then Takayama later that day. Can’t wait to tell you all about that in the next blog post! Thanks for reading :)
